Composition Quotes

“If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.”
― Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

“When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.”
― Bashō

“Haiku is not a shriek, a howl, a sigh, or a yawn; rather, it is the deep breath of life.”
― Santoka Taneda, Mountain Tasting: Haiku and Journals of Santoka Taneda

“The discipline of creation, be it to paint, compose, write, is an effort towards wholeness.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

“So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.”
― Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

“When one does a thing, it appears good, otherwise one would not write it. Only later comes reflection, and one discards or accepts the thing. Time is the best censor, and patience a most excellent teacher.”
― Frederic Chopin

“Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations—there you will find the essence of true art, religion, and science.”
― Santoka Taneda, Mountain Tasting: Haiku and Journals of Santoka Taneda

“[On Chopin's Preludes:]

"His genius was filled with the mysterious sounds of nature, but transformed into sublime equivalents in musical thought, and not through slavish imitation of the actual external sounds. His composition of that night was surely filled with raindrops, resounding clearly on the tiles of the Charterhouse, but it had been transformed in his imagination and in his song into tears falling upon his heart from the sky. ... The gift of Chopin is [the expression of] the deepest and fullest feelings and emotions that have ever existed. He made a single instrument speak a language of infinity. He could often sum up, in ten lines that a child could play, poems of a boundless exaltation, dramas of unequalled power.”
― George Sand, Story of My Life: The Autobiography of George Sand

“There are two moments worthwhile in writing, the one when you start and the other when you throw it in the waste-paper basket.”
― Samuel Beckett

“The Author To Her Book


Thou ill-formed offspring of my feeble brain,
Who after birth did'st by my side remain,
Till snatcht from thence by friends, less wise than true,
Who thee abroad exposed to public view,
Made thee in rags, halting to th' press to trudge,
Where errors were not lessened (all may judge).
At thy return my blushing was not small,
My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.
I cast thee by as one unfit for light,
The visage was so irksome in my sight,
Yet being mine own, at length affection would
Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.
I washed thy face, but more defects I saw,
And rubbing off a spot, still made a flaw.
I stretcht thy joints to make thee even feet,
Yet still thou run'st more hobbling than is meet.
In better dress to trim thee was my mind,
But nought save home-spun cloth, i' th' house I find.
In this array, 'mongst vulgars may'st thou roam.
In critic's hands, beware thou dost not come,
And take thy way where yet thou art not known.
If for thy father askt, say, thou hadst none;
And for thy mother, she alas is poor,
Which caused her thus to send thee out of door.”
― Anne Bradstreet, The Works of Anne Bradstreet

“A poet, you see, is a light thing, and winged and holy, and cannot compose before he gets inspiration and loses control of his senses and his reason has deserted him.”
― Plato

“I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.”
― Franz Schubert

“Transformations are a part of life. We are constantly being changed by things changing around us. Nobody can control that. Nobody can control the environment, the economy, luck, or the moods of others. Compositions change. Positions change. Dispositions change. Experiences change. Opportunities and attitudes change. You will change.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Music, even in situations of the greatest horror, should never be painful to the ear but should flatter and charm it, and thereby always remain music.”
― Woflgang Amadeus Mozart

“In the pursuit of greater equality in our education system, from K to PhD, technology access, print literacies, and verbal skill all collide as requirements for even basic participation in an information-based, technology-dependent economy and society.”
― Adam J. Banks

“At painful times, when composition is impossible and reading is not enough, grammars and dictionaries are excellent for distraction.”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Music is, for me, like a beautiful mosaic which God has put together. He takes all the pieces in his hand, throws them into the world, and we have to recreate the picture from the pieces.”
― Jean Sibelius

“...anyone still attempting to argue that Ebonics is a problem for black students or that it is somehow connected to a lack of intelligence or lack of desire to achieve is about as useful as a Betamax video cassette player, and it's time for those folks to be retired, be they teachers, administrators, or community leaders, so the rest of us can try to do some real work in the service of equal access for black students and all students. (15)”
― Adam J. Banks, Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age

“pencils racing across paper, a sound I like." Marisol”
― Eileen Granfors, Some Rivers End on the Day of the Dead

“Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves. ... Lines give birth to lines. Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing. ... Make a drawing flow, stopping sometimes, and going on. ... Search for the simple constructive forces, line the lines of a suspension bridge. Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out. ... Have purpose in the places where lines stop.”
― Robert Henri

“JESUS & THE WEATHER

I don't think Jesus Who is Our Lord would have liked the weather in Limerick because it's always raining and the Shannon keeps the whole city damp. My father says the Shannon is a killer river because it killed my two brothers. When you look at pictures of Jesus He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions.

Anytime Jesus got hungry all He had to do was go up the road to a fig tree or an orange tree and have His fill. If He wanted a pint He could wave His hand over a big glass and there was the pint. Or He could visit Mary Magdalene and her sister, Martha, and they'd give Him His dinner no questions asked and He'd get his feet washed and dried with Mary Magdalene's hair while Martha washed the dishes, which I don't think is fair. Why should she have to wash the dishes while her sister sits out there chatting away with Our Lord? It's a good thing Jesus decided to be born Jewish in that warm place because if he was born in Limerick he'd catch the consumption and be dead in a month and there wouldn't be any Catholic Church and there wouldn't be any Communion or Confirmation and we wouldn't have to learn the catechism and write compositions about Him.

The End.”
― Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes

“Sometimes in composition class, when I have been confronted by someone who simply cannot get the first word written on paper, I give the following advice: Say your essay into a tape recorder and then write it down.”
― Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Writing Poetry To Save Your Life: How To Find The Courage To Tell Your Stories

“the composition of each epoch depends upon the way the frequented roads are frequented.”
― Gertrude Stein, Picasso

“And every time a song is done, it whispers, you can go now... you aren't needed anymore.”
― Kristin Hersh, Rat Girl

“At the age of 48, my body had become a chemistry experiment that I was constantly changing the composition of the chemicals in it to find beneficial reactions.”
― Steven Magee

“The hardest thing is the words, how long it takes, he says, taking a sip of his drink, the concentration you need to work out what goes with what, how to put together a single sentence. I had no idea that shaping a sentence was so difficult, all the possible ways there are to do i, even the simplest sentence, as soon as it's written down, all the hesitations, all the problems. (Mickey Mantle describing writing his memoir.)”
― Nathalie Léger, Suite for Barbara Loden

“Those around me persist in not understanding that I have never been able to live in a real world of people and things. And that is why I have this irrefutable need to escape and become involved in adventures which seem inexplicable because they involve a man no one recognizes. And perhaps that is what is best in me! Besides, an artist by definition is a man accustomed to dreams and who lives among phantoms. . . . How could it be expected that this same person would be able to follow in his daily life the strict observance of traditions— laws and other barriers erected by a hypocritical and cowardly world. (Letter from Claude Debussy to Jacques Durand)”
― Eric Frederick Jensen, Debussy

“Traditional music is the foundation of what the folk music revival was about—songs of unknown authorship handed down through the generations. I keep returning to these old, classic songs, often bringing them back to find new meaning and fresh interpretations. “Danny Boy,” “The Lark in the Morning,” “Barbara Allen,” “So Early, Early in the Spring,” and “The Gypsy Rover” have lasted for years and will endure for years more. They touch your heart, and for anyone trying to write new and original songs, they stand as an unspoken challenge: make something as good and as timeless as this and you will have won the heart of your listener. You also will have added something to the story of humankind. Traditional songs didn’t just spring from the earth, of course. Somebody somewhere came up with a melody through which to tell a story, and that story-song got passed along. These songs survive in the memory of a culture because they tell stories of universal emotion and experience—of love, heartbreak, mourning, abandonment, victory, and defeat—and because they are so very adaptable to so many times, to so many people. One person would add a verse; another would change a melody a bit. This is what we call the “folk process,” borrowing to fit the time, the person, the incident.”
― Judy Collins

“When composition is good, you don’t really notice it, but you definitely notice when compositional elements are ignored. An artwork will seem unsuccessful or ‘wrong’ to you, even if you don’t know why.”
― Shelly Dax, The Tattoo Textbook: Escape the Grind, Do What You Love, and Launch Your Kick-Ass Tattoo Career

“It is quite amazing that the exact touch that we need to heal a single wound, or the life-altering revelation that begins the process of healing every wound can be handed to us in the poverty of a few simple words.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough